A Quick Exam
by DreamingofPurpleSkies
Summary: It's time for the ninja's physicals and Sakura is in charge of Naruto's. Thanks to the Kyuubi, most of Naruto's wounds have disappeared without a trace. Except the ones that are meant to be a lesson.


Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto.

This is just a little something that I threw together the other day. I don't expect much, but please read and review!!

It was time for the ninja's annual physical, where med nins assess whether or not the shinobi are fit for active duty. While there were many times between physicals that the shinobi would visit due to injuries received in the line of duty, these thorough check ups were necessary for assessing the ninja's health during times not full of injuries and missions.

Sakura, having trained with the 5th Hokage, was among the medics who examined long lists of shinobi during a weeklong process. Her current patient was assigned to her specifically by the Hokage, since he was well known to be a handful for the other nurses. But Sakura could handle him, Tsunade assured her.

When Sakura ushered Naruto into the examination room, she suppressed a sigh. She wasn't sure that Tsunade was right. As always, he was a bundle of energy, even after training with Jiraiya for over two years. But that wasn't everything that made Sakura believe she wasn't the right medic for the job.

When she asked him to take off his clothes for the exam, he turned beat red and refused to meet her eyes, mumbling something about not being ready to go so far. Peeved, Sakura bashed him over the head, adjusting his way of thinking of the situation.

"Come on, Naruto," Sakura sighed. "Be serious. I just need you to take off your jacket and your pants. I'm not telling you to strip naked."

Naruto laughed sheepishly. "Sorry, Sakura-chan. Doctor's offices make me nervous."

Sakura replied with a small smile of her own, "Well, it's no wonder. You always seem to end up here for one reason or another, usually with some giant wound."

As she was talking about one memory or another where he did something to hurt himself, she did a brisk examination of his body, looking for any abnormalities. She didn't find any at first, which was, in and of itself, an abnormality. He didn't seem to have a scar on him with the exception of his whisker like lines on his cheeks, not even from when he fought Sasuke to bring him back to the village. Such thorough healing was probably from the benefits of having the Kyuubi in him.

"I don't know why I should bother doing this now," Naruto was saying as she listened to his heartbeat. "I just got a clean bill of health two weeks ago after our last mission."

"This is just procedure," Sakura replied without thought. She had heard much of the same all week. She checked off another thing off her list. "Be thankful this isn't a complete examination and just a cursory one to make sure all of your limbs work and you have all the necessary limbs and eyes and whatnot."

Naruto chuckled at this. Sakura took hold of his arm to begin testing his blood pressure, only to stop. Naruto, who had been looking around the room, turned to see what was the matter. Since her eyes were glued to his forearm, she didn't see the rapid change in his facial expressions. Gently, he pulled his arm from her hands, giving her a soft, kind smile.

"Don't worry about those, Sakura-chan," he said simply.

"But Naruto…" Sakura began, but she hesitated. She wasn't sure what sort of questions she wanted to ask. And she was afraid of the answer.

"Don't worry, Sakura-chan," Naruto said with a high-powered smile. "That was a long time ago. I hardly notice them anymore."

Sakura frowned at him, examining his face. Taking both arms into her hands, she flipped them so the inside was facing upwards. "How can you not notice these when you don't have a single scar anywhere else on your body? You've had holes put in your chest, more stab wounds than I can count, and a just plain assortment of injuries that would leave others disfigured overtime without a single scar. But here you have two. What happened?"

Naruto sighed. "Are you done with everything else?" he asked evasively. "It's cold in here and I'd love to put my shirt back on."

"Naruto," Sakura began.

"Or did you want to keep gazing at my amazing body, hmm?" Naruto said wickedly, his usual fox-like grin taking over his features.

"You-!" Sakura growled, bopping him over the head. "Fine, you can put your clothes back on. But first, I have a question. Please?"

Naruto sighed and hopped off the examination table to put on his black shirt, tiny chain links woven into the fabric nearly invisible to even the trained eye. He pulled on his shirt with his back to Sakura. She waited patiently for him to turn to face her.

She sat down next to him when he finally returned to the examination table. Taking one of his hands in her own, she exposed one of the two lines that ran up his arm, tracing it with her free hand. "What happened," she asked simply.

"An attempt on my life," Naruto replied.

"When?" Sakura asked, wanting to be surprised, but was sadly not. Not after all she had learned about him.

"When I was twelve," Naruto said quietly.

Sakura gasped. She had assumed that this had happened during his travels with Jiraiya or something of that nature. But when he was twelve? That was back when they had just formed the Team.

"How did it happen?" Sakura asked, wanting to know who had threatened his life, almost hoping the person was still around so she could beat the tar out of them for even considering harming Naruto-kind, thoughtful, brilliantly happy Naruto, who never had a negative thing to say about any of his comrades.

"It was back when I had failed the exam, right before I joined Team 7," Naruto said, unhappily explaining. "I was on a rooftop, staring at the moon, and wondering what was wrong with me. Then Mizuki came along. It certainly distracted me. But I keep these scars for a lifetime, according to that damned fox. I asked him about it one day, when I was bullying him into helping me during training and I was cut all over. I asked him why he didn't heal those when I got them.

"He told me that it was to remind me of a lesson, and if that it ever happened again, seal be damned, he would rip his way out of the cage and tear away my control of my body and take over. Apparently, he doesn't take kindly to wounds that I get outside of battle, especially the deliberate kind."

"Deliberate?" Sakura was reduced to single word phrases as the meaning of his words sunk in. The meaning sunk in along with a bone deep chill and a kind of fear that left her spiraling in search of a way to orient herself. If Naruto, the eternal optimist actually…

Naruto's dry, humorless laugh shook her out of her thoughts. "It was a stupid thing to do, taking that kunai and doing that to myself. But it seemed like the best thing to do. I had just failed the ninja exam, had no hopes of passing the way that my skills were at the time, and I actually had more than one person actually threaten my life as I was walking by, quiet as anything. I hadn't even done a prank that week to any of them. One of them, I hadn't seen anywhere before in my life, but she called me a monster and told me it was all my fault that something or other terrible happened to her and ruined her life.

"So I was sitting there, feeling soppy and pathetic, and thought that that lady had the right of it. Maybe I was a curse of some kind, the way people had been treating me all my life. And without becoming a ninja, I had no idea what I would do to make people recognize me and respect me. So I…" Naruto trailed off, gesturing vaguely at nothing in particular.

"Naruto," Sakura tried to begin sympathetically, putting her hand on his shoulder in belated comfort. He shrugged it off not rudely.

"Then along came that traitor, Mizuki. I was supposed to be his meal ticket to get that forbidden scroll and leave the village. I certainly couldn't just _die_ on him when it was time to act out his plan." Naruto gave a little bitter laugh. "I guess I owe the man my life, except he tried to kill me again later, so I guess that little debt is nullified. He bandaged my … well, he took care of me and then sent me off with the hope that maybe living wouldn't suck so much. And here we are now."

Sakura looked into Naruto's eyes and sighed. She recognized that look. She had worn that look for a long time after she and Ino had parted ways, but it couldn't have been as powerful as the one Naruto wore right then. It was the look that pleaded for her not to pity him, not to show sympathy, that such displays would hurt more than help.

The medic ninja jumped off the table abruptly, stretching her arms above her head and looking back at him with a grin. "Well, you're done for now. All limbs accounted for. Just don't go and get yourself torn up for a few weeks."

"Aw, Sakura-chan," Naruto whined with a grin after a beat. He stood up also. "I've got to leave on a mission in three days. You can't expect me to sail through that without a scratch like Gaara!"

She laughed at him. "Well, would you mind putting some pants on? You're protests come off a little weak when you're standing there in a t-shirt and yellow striped boxers." Naruto blushed bright red and quickly got dressed again. After strapping on his kunai pouch, he headed towards the door. Sakura stopped him just before he left.

"You know, I think the Kyuubi is right, for once. I think you needed to learn a lesson that your life is too important to just throw away, and those scars are an important reminder." Sakura attempted to smile and only managed a half crazed, strained smirk. "Just don't let it know that I agreed with it. After all, it was only looking after its own skin. I'm looking after your's."

Naruto grinned back more easily than Sakura, though his also would have looked a little odd to those close to him. He left Sakura to the now empty, sterile room to prep it for the next round. To be honest, she didn't think she could just go on with the rest of her day after learning what she had just minutes ago.

It was thinking of Naruto that convinced her that she should. He hadn't wanted her to show pity or sympathy. Surely stopping work that made sure the ninjas were able to do their jobs in good health would be insulting to him. After all, if he wanted to become Hokage one day, he would need his people in good fighting condition to move his own ninja way forward with the times.

Well, there it is. Hope you all enjoyed it. Please read and review. If you have any ideas about what I should write about (not limited to Naruto fanfiction, btw) let me know. I'm kinda dry on the whole story idea process. :P


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